New Stooge

Albania's Tito-built Communist Party, still loyal to Stalin, summoned its leaders to a crisis conclave this week. As 360 delegates converged on Tirana (pop. 30,800), it looked very much as if Party Boss Enver Hoxha was being superseded by Party General Secretary Mehmet Shehu.

Behind both, working the strings, was Russian Puppetmaster Dimitri Chuvakhin, the Soviet minister. Albania, the weakest Soviet satellite, is not even a member of Russia's Cominfofm. Yet if Titoism erupted in Albania, Stalin might blame Tito, seize upon Albania as an excuse to send troops into Yugoslavia.

The job of Stalin's Chuvakhin is to hold on to Albania in the face of anti-Red guerrillas in the mountains and of heresy in the party. To do it, he must have a local boy as a front. Enver Hoxha has been the front so far. But Chuvakhin's fair-haired boy seems to be Mehmet Shehu.

Four Prisons in Dibra Street. Shehu, now 37, was graduated from Albania's American Vocational School in 1932. In the Spanish civil war he fought in the Red-led Garibaldi Brigade. He went back to Albania in 1942 to lead the Tito-organized resistance movement along with Hoxha. In 1945 Shehu was shipped to Moscow, returned the next year to become chief of staff of the Albanian army and general secretary of the party. He is Albania's only Moscow-trained Communist leader. Shehu, a 100-proof career Stalinist, has more ability, guile, circumspection and hardheadedness than Hoxha.

Last week, Albanian anti-Communist emigres in Rome reported a hair-raising story of Shehu's Stalinesque qualities: at a central committee meeting in Tirana several weeks ago attended by an unnamed Soviet colonel, a complaint was made by Vice Minister of Industry Abedin Shehu (no kin to Mehmet Shehu) that Albania was not getting from Russia the military help it needed "to defend itself from Yugoslavia and Greece." In the course of a committee wrangle over this, Abedin Shehu was accused of Trotskyism.

According to the emigre Albanians' story, Mehmet Shehu pulled out a revolver and killed Abedin Shehu on the spot. The next day Radio Tirana reported that Abedin Shehu had committed suicide. "As a result there have been many arrests. In Tirana four buildings in Dibra Street have been converted into prisons . . ."

"Enemy Activity." Albania's Communist paper, Zeri i Popullit (Voice of the People), conceded that there had been a party purge. It scolded against "the Fascist gang in Belgrade, and, recently, the anti-party activities of Abedin Shehu . . . enemy activity inside our party."

In Rome, homesick Albanian emigres listened attentively to what sounded like good news from home--a major Communist party split.

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